Montaigne’s Essays

Montaigne is a prominent writer during the French Renaissance and known for his work Essays. It captures some intellectual perspective of the world and shares some complex ideas about our identity. Montaigne goes over some different concepts in this book and one of the main ones is skepticism. He is known for the phrase, “What do I know?” which emphasizes his skepticism. One of his main beliefs is that humans are unable to obtain certainty. Montaigne shares that humans simply cannot put trust in our reasoning because thoughts are something that we cannot control as they just appear to us. Through this idea, he connects it to his skepticism on religion. He is skeptical considering the topic of religion but he shares that everyone needs to follow the same religious standards. In France, they should yield to the Catholic government. He states that everyone must be obedient to the ruler and stay in their place. Montaigne agrees with Plato that citizens needed to be ruled over so that they will follow the laws with no questions.